


_seven_

by Alaskaa (kosmicdust)



Series: the_death_of_keith_kogane [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Claustrophobia, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Heavy Angst, Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Adoptive Siblings, Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sad Ending, Y i k e s, unnecessary dark humor, very bittersweet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 15:49:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosmicdust/pseuds/Alaskaa
Summary: It's been a long time.Four years.Three years.Seven.





	_seven_

**Author's Note:**

> here it is! the "sequel' to the_death_of_keith_kogane! it's not /exactly/ a sequel, but you'll see. I've been working on this forever and I'm so glad that it's starting!
> 
> prepare for angstfest part ii

**__initiate__ **

Keith stared at the little device in his hands with a sigh. What was he going to do with this, anyway? It wouldn’t be long before they realized he had escaped. Despite not knowing he was a former Paladin, the Galra Empire really did hate him- or love him, if that was how you looked at it. Keith preferred to think they just really hated him and treated him the way they had out of anger at the fact that their empire was falling.

There were a lot of ways Keith had fought through what had happened over the past… was it four years? He wasn’t totally sure, but that sounded accurate. Four decaphoebs had gone by last time he counted, and that about four years, right? Or was it longer?

It had been a long, long time.

His thoughts turned back to the device. It looked a lot like a camera- maybe smaller. More of a square. Only two buttons- one for start and one for stop. Why had he gotten this, anyway? Keith had risked everything to steal some GAC and buy it. He wasn’t totally sure why it had caught his attention anyway. Was it because it looked like a camera from Earth? Or maybe because it was an opportunity?

Opportunity for… what, exactly? If he recorded something and sent it to… well, his old team, Voltron, because who else did he have in the world, how long would it take for the message to reach them? He doubted there was a good intergalactic mail service that didn’t care about affiliations.

That lightened Keith’s mind a little bit. He almost smiled at the thought of some alien guy in a spacesuit peddling an old-fashioned bicycle through space, trying to catch up to the Castle of Lions. Maybe his lips twitched. But he didn’t smile.

Keith threaded his fingers through his hair, thinking. Would he feel better if he talked about everything that had happened? It had been a long time; he doubted Team Voltron still cared about him anymore. He was always expendable. He didn’t control the Castleship. He didn’t take care of everyone. He didn’t lead the team, at least not the way he should have. He wasn’t good at technology or cooking. He wasn’t good at making people smile.

What was Keith good for, anyway?

Maybe his experience over the past few decaphoebs was a long time coming. What was he worth, anyway, other than something to take out your emotions on? Keith supposed that happened already. Allura’s racism. Lance’s jealousy. Jokes at his expense. Even when people trusted him, they just dumped their feelings on him and expected him to have a solution. Keith wasn’t Shiro. He didn’t have a solution.

All of those memories felt so long ago. When was the last time he had seen their faces? The reality of his situation bore down on Keith. They probably thought he was dead. Everyone probably thought he was dead, after what had happened at Naxcela. And if they didn’t think he was dead, they probably figured he hated them.

Keith would hate himself if that was what he believed. They all probably hated him. They would only hate him more after learning what had happened with the Galra.

He groaned and leaned back against the wall. It kind of hurt when his head hit the cold surface, but he didn’t really care. Keith had faced worse. What hurt more was the idea that maybe… no one cared about him anymore. No one came to his rescue. No one tried to find him. What if the people he’d been clinging to for years for the sake of his sanity… didn’t care anymore? Didn’t remember?

Keith was worthless, wasn’t he? There was a reason that they had abandoned him.

If he could, Keith would’ve screamed. But with things as they were, he couldn’t afford to be that loud. Keith wanted his freedom, and he wasn’t willing to lose it over frustration. He had suffered in silence before. This would be just like those other times.

Keith let out a long breath before dragging himself up off the floor. His legs kind of hurt from being curled into his chest for so long. He would have to rebuild his muscle if he ever managed to get off-planet and away from the Galra.

As a test, Keith pressed the start button on the camera. He tilted his head in confusion when a bright screen appeared in a language he didn’t understand. It looked like it might have been Galra. Keith had no idea what to do with it, so he simply set it down on a dusty table and sat down in a chair in front of the camera- he decided that was what it would be called, since he didn’t really have a better name for it.

Keith stared at it for a moment before pressing the start button once again. A red light flashed on, and although he couldn’t see the same bright screen from this side of the camera, he assumed that meant it was recording.

Awkwardly, Keith cleared his throat, staring at it for a moment before trying to talk.

“Hey- uh, I know I’m talking to a camera right now, but…” Words failed him and he sighed. Keith drew his legs up once again and set his chin over his knees with a sigh. What was he supposed to  _ say? _ Back on Earth, people did this for therapy, but would it be the same if he was talking to technology?

Keith hit the stop button and closed his eyes tightly. How should he do this? Maybe he should organize his thoughts in some way? Maybe… a part for everything he’d experienced? That could work. And it might give whoever watches this- because he doubted his former teammates would ever watch them- an idea into what he was feeling before everything happened. Keith felt like pouring his angst out to a camera. Was that normal?

He grabbed the camera again and studied the bright screen. Was there an option somewhere for names? A Galra word that  _ might _ have been “name” was in the corner of the screen, so Keith pressed that. He frowned at it for a moment when a keyboard or something didn’t pop up. There was only one option, so he selected that. Nothing happened. Was he supposed to say it out loud? He tried it.

“One- Earth,” he said. Two curved lines went around in what must have been the Galra version of the buffering symbol. After a few moments, Galra words appeared on the screen. Keith didn’t understand what they meant, but he figured it had translated his words to Galra. Maybe he could get someone to translate it for him at some point.

Keith turned the camera back around and set it on the table once more. He frowned at it before pressing start. He looked at the device for a moment before collecting his thoughts and speaking.

“I know it’s been a long time.” No shit, Keith, they’re going to know that if they ever see this. Was he talking to his friends? He decided that was who he was talking to, even if they never watched it. “How long, I have no idea. I don’t even know how long it’ll have been when you watch this. Maybe I’ll be long gone once you see this.” Keith was silent for a moment before quietly adding, “I hope so.”

“I’m sorry for- for whatever you think of me now,” Keith stammered. How would he make them understand how much he didn’t want them to hate him? How could he possibly put what might’ve been four years of torture into words? Twenty-two years if you counted all of his experiences in life, none of which were all that fun. “I know I abandoned you, and you can never imagine how much I regret that.”

Was that enough to make them see? Probably not. They probably hated him. Why wouldn’t they? Keith was pathetic and useless and he dragged down the team. He let out a breath, trying to release the tension from his shoulders.

“If you hate me, I get why. But… but don’t stop listening to this. Maybe you’ll have defeated the Galra by the time you see this, but if you haven’t, at the very least, this will be worth valuable information.” That was a lie, a  _ fucking lie, Kogane, _ but Keith didn’t have anything better. His time with the Galra had kept him far away from politics- at least, real politics. The emotional outcome of politics, however- that was a different story.

But… what if they had defeated the Galra by the time they watched this? That was a strange thought, that they wouldn’t watch this until further in the future than he realized. The idea of Zarkon being dead and the collapse of the Galra Empire almost brought joy to Keith. Almost. It had been too long for him to feel something like that.

“All right. Well… yeah. I doubt you wanted to hear my life story, but I know I’m never going to get the chance to tell… anyone else.” Because that was what Keith decided he would do. It was almost nice, to have something certain for once. Something certain other than the meals or the lights turning off. But he hated himself, hated how weak he had become, when he pathetically added, “I know I’m never getting back to you guys, and… I just want a chance to try and be free of this.”

That was absolutely fucking ridiculous, but what did Keith have to lose? They wouldn’t know if it was real or not. Keith had nothing to gain from lying, but the others didn’t know that. They hadn’t gone through what Keith had gone through. Not even Shiro.

“Well. Just as a warning, what happened… I don’t wish it upon anyone,” Keith whispered in an absolutely pitiful tone. “Since it’s basically my life story, we’ll start it right at the beginning.” He had absolutely no idea what was going on, but he would roll with it. Just keep talking. “My parents. I know who my mother is now- even though I never met her, I know that she’s fighting on the side of good.”

The only memories Keith had of his mother were small flashes of moments. He vaguely remembered being held by someone soft. He remembered quiet words-  _ Yorak _ and _ I love you. _ But that didn’t take away from the fact that she left him. Keith wished he could meet her, understand why she abandoned him.

She was just the first in a long chain of people that left him.

“I wasn’t like other kids when I was little, and not because I’m half-Galra. I was born into a world where I had to know too much to survive. I only lived with my dad for a few years, until I was five. I saw him slipping away as he raised glass after glass to his lips.”

Keith’s stomach dropped as he remembered it all. He remembered how his dad’s eyes, the eyes of someone who didn’t deserve the pain of Keith’s mother leaving, became dull as the days went by. His dad had been an amazing person when sober- he had taught Keith so much, from fighting to a little bit of engineering. But even those little moments became few and far between as time flew by.

His dad had never hurt Keith. He had never abused Keith in any way. What had brought tears to little Keith’s eyes was the loss of the person that had been his father.

“It wasn’t something that just happened, like a slap. No, for the first five years of my life, I watched my father poison himself because the woman he loved was… was gone. Just like how the rest of the world was gone to him. Just like how I was gone to him.”

Brief memories of his dad looking at him in confusion-  _ “Who are you? Why did you steal her face?” _

_ Why did you steal her face? _

Keith barely refrained from wincing and fixed his gaze on the camera. This wasn’t to relive his worst memories. This was for Keith to acknowledge what had happened and get over it. At least… at least for him to feel better before the Galra came for him and took him away again. Maybe Keith would even be able to fight, the way he hadn’t been able to for a long, long time.

That was wishful thinking, wasn’t it?

He returned his focus to telling his story. “They told me that he just couldn’t take care of me anymore, but I knew the truth. I realized later on that he had depression, and that it hurt to see me because I looked like- like  _ her _ .” Keith hated himself for stuttering. “The few good memories I have of him are short and bittersweet. Shared smiles, running around outside, me giving him gifts he didn’t deserve… yeah. They never outright told me this, but he killed himself a few years after I was taken away.”

His social worker had pulled him away and told him quietly that his dad had done something, and Keith couldn’t see him again. For awhile, Keith had thought that meant his dad was in jail, but years later he learned about mental health issues and realized his childhood for what it was.

For some people, it would have been a nightmare. But for Keith? It was something he could never have again.  _ Family. _

“And… that marked the end of the Koganes. It was just me, carrying on the name and legacy with both pride and regret. I lived in a facility in Houston for a while, because they had to ‘rehabilitate’ me, even though it never worked.”

Keith had gone through so many tests, but they were never able to fix the anomalies that went as deep as his DNA.

“ Anger problems. Tainted, inhuman blood. Impulsiveness. Inde-...” He drew in a sharp breath. No. That word.  _ Independence. _ Something he didn’t have, after the Galra, after Central Command. He lost his independence a long time ago, and Keith didn’t deserve to even use it to describe himself. Because he  _ wasn’t _ independent. It was too late for that.

Keith took a deep breath to pull himself out of the spiral. He wasn’t on Central Command anymore. He was fine. He was perfectly fine, and talking to his friends. He couldn’t picture their faces anymore, but they were there. Keith was okay.

It was a fucking  _ lie, _ but he didn’t exactly have any good truths to tell himself as comfort.

“When there wasn’t any more that could be done for me, they gave up and sent me to a foster home.” Keith would rather not talk about it, but his pride was gone, and so was the concept of “shame”. “I hadn’t ever really had a home before, and seeing something so foreign to me just… made me blow up. I’m not totally sure what happened there, but all I know is that I woke up in the hospital with sixteen stitches and an angry twenty-something couple shoving me back at the orphanage.”

All Keith recalled of that day was a perfectly nice man and woman, recently married, happy and together. They had accepted him into their home and treated him kindly. Too kindly. Like he was fragile. Had that set him off? Keith couldn’t remember. It had been too long ago. How did he even remember all of this?

“That kind of thing continued on for a while. Angry foster families, claiming I had all sorts of things wrong with me.” Keith tried to recall all of the things he’d been accused of having. “Autistic? Bipolar? Borderline Personality Disorder? Some really bad form of anger issues? The doctors told them every time that I was a perfectly normal kid, but every time, I only heard… worthless, unreachable, unable to be fixed, just… something replaceable.”

After the past four years- was it four years?- those words were even truer. That was all Keith was. Useless.

He wanted to hit his head on the wall again.

“Sometimes I would be shoved into a family with other kids or other foster kids. There was never enough time to try for me. ‘He’s not perfect, send him back’. ‘This isn’t cheap, quick, and easy, so I don’t want him.’ That kind of mentality drove me into thinking that those words were all I was. Destined to never be anyone special.”

Were they right? He had been a Paladin of Voltron, and then he had been a Blade. But all of that had vanished. Was being a whore to those who were in the center of power of the greatest empire the universe had ever known “special”? For some reason, Keith doubted that was what those foster families had expected for his future.

But Keith reminded himself of how bright the rest of his adolescence was. The only time in his life he had been  _ truly _ happy.

Shiro.

“But… then there was Shiro. They sent me to the Shiroganes when I was twelve. He was older than me- around eighteen, maybe. He and his family accepted me into their lives, and for the first time ever, I had a home. I was Shiro’s little brother. I was the youngest member of the Shirogane household. I left the orphanage… and never looked back.”

Keith wanted to smile again. The memories of those years rushed back to him, and they weren’t sad and depressing like the rest of his life. If Shiro ever watched this recording, Keith had to make sure that Shiro knew how much Keith cherished those memories.

“So… I was happy. I had a family, for the first time ever. I took a chance and began exploring beyond the house, and that was when I realized that I wanted space. When I looked at the stars at night, I knew I was meant to be among them.” Was that enough? Would Shiro know how much Keith  _ cared? _ He hoped so.

“I had already heard a lot about the stars from Shiro. He was close to graduation from the Garrison when I told him about my dream. He helped me through it, and gave me a chance to make it a reality. I already had grades that were good enough for the Garrison, and by fifteen, I made it into the Garrison’s flight program.”

That would probably sound snobby to anyone who didn’t know what had happened to the rest of Keith’s life- turned to absolute shit- but Keith didn’t care. He imagined Lance snickering and decided he deserved it. If people wanted to laugh at his problems, let them. It was better than having his problems turned into reasons to break him, over and over again.

“Shiro had just graduated, so I was stuck by myself with a group of people that I thought were idiots. Including one person that I had no idea I would ever see again. That person is Lance.”

Keith wanted to laugh at his singular memory of Lance, but he couldn’t. It reminded him too much of things the Galra had said to him.

“I walked into flight class on the first day, and all I saw was a bunch of insignificant people. I knew that all of them would hate me once I drew ahead- because I was certain that I  _ would _ \- so I didn’t bother acting like I cared. Then there was this one guy. Cuban, talkative, annoying, flirtatious, and not even a bad pilot… that was Lance.”

This was probably the easiest story for Keith to tell. It was honest, simple, and not a necessarily  _ bad _ memory. It had been at the Garrison, yes, but not all of his memories from the Garrison were terrible. Just most of them.

“For some reason that I’ll never understand, one day after simulations, Lance walked up to me, and I won’t ever forget what he said.”

Keith  _ wanted _ to smile again. How was he finding so many reasons to smile? Keith’s life had been terrible so far, and he honestly wouldn't mind if it ended sometime in the near future. Preferably sooner rather than later. But, strangely enough, so many of his memories of people he cared about made him  _ want _ to try to be happy again.

Why was he clinging to people he hadn’t seen in- maybe- four years? Why were the people on Team Voltron the ones he had thought of while on Central Command? What had they done to deserve spots at the forefront of his mind? Keith wished he had answers, but he had no idea  _ why _ . Why not the Shiroganes? Well, Shiro was on Team Voltron. Other than that… had anyone else showed him that  _ kindness? _

No.

But Team Voltron, Shiro included, had let him go with  _ smiles _ on their faces. Goddamn  _ smiles. _ They had been angry at him until they found out he was leaving. Maybe they didn't really want Keith around. Maybe the family he had thought he had found in Shiro, Lance, Pidge, Hunk, Allura, and Coran was all an illusion.

Keith’s life had been awful enough for him to believe it.

He shook himself out of his thoughts and focused on telling the story about Lance.

“He walked up to me and called me ‘emo boy’ to my face. He asked who was helping me cheat. I got mad and said I didn't cheat, but Lance just gave a list of people. Shiro, Iverson, the higher-ups… he said he was failing because I hurt the learning curve or something. I told him he wasn't bad at flying so he shouldn't be failing, and he just flirted with me instead.”

Keith sighed. Lance’s flirting habits had, surprisingly, calmed down once they were in space. It probably came from living with the same six people in a limited space. “And that's the only solid memory I have of him.”

He wondered how Lance would react to that. Would he be outraged? Would he laugh at how immature they had both been? What about the others? Would they think Keith was being dramatic and annoying?

Probably.

But it didn't hurt to try, did it? After all, the only thing Keith could do was  _ try. _ Try and try, but fail and fail over and over again.

“That was how our one-sided rivalry began. I never really paid attention to it, and I regret that, but not as much as I regret… other things. Anyway. I guess we had a weird sort of competition, but that’s the extent of Lance’s impact at the time. I didn’t even meet Hunk and Pidge until… after. We’ll get there.

Talking was slowly becoming easier, Keith noticed. The words fell out of his mouth smoother than they ever had. He distantly wondered if that was an effect of being addicted to quintessence. Were all Galra profound? Was that why they needed so much quintessence?

Damn. That thought was definitely a sign that he needed to avoid the quintessence when they captured him again.

“Then there was Kerberos. It happened just after I officially got into the Garrison. Sure, Shiro had been on missions before, but this one was the longest and most important one so far. Shiro dragged me out to the launch site a few days before he was scheduled to leave, because he’d been having some weird feeling in his gut. Now I know that he was probably having some freaky premonition thing.” Keith paused, a vague memory floating to the forefront of his mind. “And… yeah, that was the same day the Holts took pictures.”

Why had he lied about it at the time? Keith didn’t really know. Was it the idea that he and Shiro had once been that close? That Keith used to be important enough for someone to be brought to the launch site of their greatest accomplishment?

He wanted to sigh, but he was kind of sick of doing that.

“I was there when the ship took off. I got away from the Garrison every night to get to town to see the news, because I knew the Garrison would tell us nothing- only fake information.”

Every night, Keith would slip out of his dorm with the hope that no one would see him. He would find where he hid his bike and go out to town, where he would sit quietly in the local bar, which wasn’t as dirty as everyone seemed to think it was. It was actually fairly nice. Brightly lit. No neon colors that gave Keith a headache. But most importantly, the international news channel- it might seem depressing for a bar, but most people weren’t there to have fun. No one questioned his presence. They must have figured that if a seventeen-year-old showed up every night and watched the television intensely, there had to be a reason.

Once the news channel shut off for the night around two in the morning, Keith would head back to the Garrison and try to catch a little bit of sleep before work began once again.

“After months with little to no sleep, I fell asleep the night the news came in. I was confused that morning, because everyone was staring at me. Watching, waiting, whispering- seeing when I’d break.”

Walking through the halls had given him an eerie feeling. His roommate had already left by the time Keith woke up, which wasn’t all that unusual, so he hadn’t questioned it. Keith had dressed for the day and headed out to the dining hall. On his way there, he had felt a strange prickling sensation on the back of his neck, like he was being watched. For once, people were fairly quiet- but nothing too out of the ordinary, sometimes the Garrison had quiet mornings.

“So when the announcement came, I was sitting cluelessly, eating breakfast in my corner. I didn’t expect it when Iverson stood up and told everyone that the Kerberos Mission had failed due to  _ pilot error _ . And Shiro was the pilot.”

Keith remembered clearly how it had gone down. He had gotten breakfast- a semi-warm oatmeal with far too much milk and a slice of bread. The lady who had served it to him had given him a strange smile, one that only increased his uneasiness. Keith had skirted around the edge of the dining hall, avoiding as many people as possible to get to his usual seat, a small table in the corner of the room where no one ever sat. For the first time since people discovered his flying skills, people had glanced back at him with their expressions varying from confused to pitying.

_ What do they want? _ he remembered thinking.  _ What more could they possibly want? _ Keith had nothing. He wasn’t scandalous or interesting. His only defining traits were the little-known fact that he was an orphan, his talent in piloting, and his connection to Shiro.

The biggest clue should have made it all obvious. Iverson had shown up with a surprisingly subdued expression. Iverson never showed up to the cadets’ meals, no matter how good they were.

Keith, to this day, still had no idea how the others knew that the Kerberos Mission had gone downhill. Was it a hacker? He wouldn’t have put it past Pidge to hack into their database and track information. Or maybe he wasn’t the only person following the news. But none of that mattered. Only the words Iverson had spoken mattered.

_ The Kerberos Mission is gone. They crashed due to pilot error. _

Keith bit back a growl. It was over now. Maybe they had already visited Earth and gotten revenge on the Garrison for all they had done. Who knew? Voltron was, after all, a rebel operation, and Keith had been stuck on the wrong side for four years.

Four goddamn years.

“For the first month, I didn’t talk to anyone. I was in shock. How could my brother, my best friend, the only person I cared about and cared for me in return, be dead? It didn’t make any sense. It couldn’t be true, it _ wasn’t true _ . I was so mad that I… finally snapped. The Galaxy Garrison decided to introduce a new simulation- the  _ Kerberos Rescue Mission _ .”

Keith hated the Kerberos Rescue Mission. He hated it so, so much. Over five years might have passed since then, but the pain wasn’t gone. Because… how could the Garrison do such a thing? How could they pretend that there was hope for the crew of the Kerberos mission despite proclaiming them as  _ dead? _ It hurt, to pretend that everything was alright. It hurt for Keith to walk around like a zombie, do what he was told and try to focus on everything but Shiro.

It  _ hurt _ for the Garrison to  _ keep on lying. _

“I walked into class that day, and Iverson wanted me to model the simulator for everyone. Something about how I was the example of the perfect pilot. Quiet, talented, no longer getting into fights, the phoenix in the ashes of a dead brother. Dead inside.”

Had he been dead inside? Keith didn’t really know. But did that make it okay for people to pretend that he had a  _ choice? _ People like Iverson, people who ran the Garrison, had no idea what it felt like to lose all of their options. People like that didn’t know people like Keith. They didn’t  _ care _ about people like Keith.

They should have expected it, really. Keith wasn’t as weak as he had seemed to be during that month, and they all knew it.

_ “Well, not anymore, _ I had decided, though that mentality is long gone from me now.” Saying that out loud, Keith was tempted to laugh once again. How had he been so stupid, once? Disobeying the people in power, acting like he could rise up against them.

Keith knew better than that, now.

He had the scars to prove it, scars littered across his body and soul like some kind of twisted  _ normality, _ like Keith bearing them was something that meant less than it did. Like they weren’t marks that told of how he had broken.

Keith knew so much better than that, now.

“So I got into the simulator and, in front of everybody at the Garrison, I crashed straight into the surface of Kerberos.”

It had felt so  _ satisfying, _ to give himself some shred of dignity and pride and self-worth. To say that Keith didn’t believe their lies, and he refused to settle for them.

Sometimes, Keith felt like reaching out to his past self and telling himself that it wasn’t worth the pain. It wasn’t worth the tears and the bloodshed and his own shattered remains.

He shook his head minutely and reminded himself to focus on the story. They didn’t need to know how broken Keith was. Not yet.

If he could shield them from it, he would.

“I walked out, and Iverson stalked towards me, clearly furious. He didn’t have the right of me caring about ruining his reputation. After saying the mission had failed, after saying _ Shiro _ was dead, after trying to make me do a fake rescue mission for him- he doesn’t have the right of respect. Before he could say a word, I punched him in the face.”

That might have been the most powerful Keith had ever felt.

It had been nice.

He didn’t have much else to say about it.

“I said ‘pilot error’ and walked away. The next day, I found myself dropped in some middle-of-nowhere Arizona town, stripped of my right to join any part of the military or get a flying license. That might have been the greatest moment of my life. It definitely fits into the top ten.”

Keith let himself imagine he was smiling. If he had anything to smile about, this was it, wasn’t it?

“I had nothing. No one. Nowhere to go. So I built a shack in the desert a few miles from the Garrison. Gathered the rest of my money and bought a hoverbike.”

The shack had been modeled after the one his parents had once lived in, as far as he could remember it. That one had been destroyed by a fire a few years after his dad’s suicide.

“I got into illegal racing, because I needed something to do. Make sure that not all of my potential was wasted. Besides, I didn’t want to go back to the rest of the world. In my opinion back then, it was better to live alone and with minimum resources than go back to civilization and be forced back to the Shiroganes or some new foster family. That’s antisocial, I know, but it was how I felt. I can… I can barely imagine it, now.”

How had Keith once been independent? How had he cherished every moment of solitude? Keith could barely live by himself anymore. It could only have been a day since he escaped, but he hadn’t been able to steal any food or money. The quintessence in his system was making up for it, at least some of it, but Keith had no idea what to do. Maybe they would capture him again by then.

It was disappointing how comforting that thought was.

“At some point, I came to my senses and decided to try and find out what really happened to Shiro. It took months, but I eventually found those caves. It didn’t light up for me like it did for Lance, but I marked it down. After visiting, I felt the energy that I know now was Blue’s energy, even though I had no idea at the time.”

Keith wasn’t totally sure what had driven him to that cave, but he was glad that it had. What would he have been without it?

_ Not a space whore, _ his mind helpfully supplied.

_ Fuck you, _ he thought to himself.

Keith certainly did get fucked. More times than necessary. Far more times.

Okay, he really needed to sleep, eat, and drink some water. Was he going crazy? Probably. If he wasn’t already.

“All of my research led to that one night. When Shiro’s pod crashed into Earth about a mile away, I wasn’t sure who was in there, only the vague idea of an ‘arrival’, but I needed to know. So I set the explosions not too far away, and I broke in as soon as I had a chance. I wasn’t expecting to see my long-lost adopted brother, strapped down, unconscious, with a scar across the bridge of his nose, a tuft of white hair, and an alien prosthetic.”

Seeing Shiro like that had been… strange. Keith had walked into the tent expecting some sort of alien, and he had only been able to give the body on the table a quick glance while he knocked the scientists unconscious. And for a few moments without looking at the face, Keith had genuinely believed it to be someone else. Why would it have been Shiro?

But it had been. He hadn’t lost Shiro.

The quiet seconds of confusion and awe were quickly broken, of course.

“I wasn’t expecting to see Lance, either. I didn’t recognize him at first, but trust me, ‘cargo pilot’ was not what I meant to say. Especially with my first human interaction outside of store employees. I really did know Lance outside of being a cargo pilot, I swear.” Calling Lance a cargo pilot had probably been a terrible idea, but Keith had barely bothered talking for nearly a year. How was he supposed to know that Lance would take offense to that?

“Anyway, it was kind of a rush, but then I met the rest of you guys. I half-recognized Pidge, because Matt was friends with Shiro, but she went by a new name and looked like a mini-Matt, so I just ignored that.” Pidge’s appearance had quickly thrown Keith off-guard, but he figured she was Katie Holt, so he hadn’t bothered asking.

“I didn’t have much time to speak to Shiro alone, because we went for the Blue Lion as soon as we could. You guys know how that story goes. Flying lions, showing off to the Garrison, leaving Earth.”

Keith felt guilty for not making the most of his time with Shiro. But how was he supposed to have known that he would lose Shiro over and over again?

_ Takashi, _ he thought with a mental sigh. He really was sick of sighing in real life.

Keith brought his attention back to the device in front of him. So he was really going to catalog his life? A different recording for each part? Earth, Voltron, the Blade of Marmora, and the Galra. It was… nice, in a way, to imagine he was talking to his friends. Keith doubted that they cared at all, but no one was around to care if he pretended or not.

“That brings a conclusion to this file. Next up is the rest of the time you knew me.”

Keith finally let his lips curve into a small, sad smile. Yes, it was nice to pretend.

He tapped the stop button and let himself fall onto the ground with a huff. Keith had never felt more exhausted. He wondered what they would think. Would they see him as broken? Useless? Would they laugh? Keith was revealing everything he had ever kept from them. He was exposing all of his dark secrets and doubts and fears. Would they watch in disbelief as he told them what he had become?

Would they think it was all a lie?

Maybe that was what Keith was afraid of. That they would think that he had run off from the war to hide away on some small planet where they would never find him. That they would think he came up with a sad story just to try and win them back. Keith didn’t want to be fake. He  _ couldn’t be _ fake. He had pretended enough whenever he met a new Galra during his time in the Empire. Keith was only one thing to the Galra, and he didn’t want to be that thing.

But he lied to himself, to them, to everyone. He had lied his entire life, told everyone that he was fine. He told himself he was fine.

Keith wasn’t fine. He was willing to admit that. He acknowledged the fact that he probably wouldn’t ever be fine.

But maybe he was the boy who cried wolf.

He had told too many stories over the years for anyone to be able to discern the lies from the truth.

Keith wanted to scream. He wanted to let out a scream that everyone would hear, for them to be able to understand his anguish. But he couldn’t. He had to finish this.

Instead of a scream, he let out a few broken whimpers before he pushed himself back up into a seated position. Keith couldn’t let himself fall apart before he finished it. It was like something was tugging him towards it, like he had some bright future ahead of him that would only come if he completed the recordings.

He took a deep breath and grabbed the camera. He pressed the same symbol on the tiny screen as before and hoped that it really was “name” and not something else. He paused for a second and wondered what to name it. Should he try using codes instead of the actual names? Something that, if the Galra ever found it, wouldn’t be used to hurt Voltron, but his friends would know the meaning of?

What would his friends know as Voltron? Voltron was a bunch of mechanical cats. Could Keith use that? Mecha… cat?

That was as stupid as that cheer Lance made up, so long ago.

Mechacat it was.

“Two- Mechacat,” he offered. Galra words appeared on the screen and he hoped that it really was working. Keith set the camera back down and pressed the start button prematurely, then sat still for a moment, wondering what to say.

“Alright. I guess I’ll start again. Just so you guys know, being on Team Voltron was actually one of the best times of my life. It had its ups and downs, but honestly, I could never regret getting friends that I didn’t deserve.”

Because Keith really had loved Voltron. He had loved all of his teammates. He had loved being  _ important. _ But he hadn’t been able to handle it. He wasn’t good enough for Voltron. How had  _ Lance _ ever thought that he needed to leave?

“So… I’ll just go in order, then. We can start with Sendak’s attack on Arus. When I first found the Red Lion. It was like something was calling to me. It was an energy, but more powerful than Blue, back in the desert. Red… she didn’t want to just show up and let me be her Paladin. I had to prove myself, but once I did, we were bonded together.”

Keith thought of the event and imagined the ghost of a smile crossing his lips again. It didn’t, but he thought about it. His connection to Red had been more powerful than the others, something he didn’t really understand. Was it because none of the others had known about the fact that he was half-Galra? And when he thought about it...

“Although, that event was one of the many, many signs of my Galra heritage. I hit the airlock button without thinking, but we know now that you need Galra blood to use their technology- or if you have their technology, like Shiro’s arm.”

Keith couldn’t believe he had been such an idiot.

It had been so obvious.

“I didn’t think about it at the time, but there were all sorts of signs that I wasn’t fully human. I’ll get there later.”

He was going in chronological order. Keith hadn’t known at the time, so he chose to move on. There was no point in going into detail. They didn’t need to know yet.

“The first time we formed Voltron. That forged a relationship almost as deep as the one I had with Red. It was the first time I really connected with people, other than Shiro. It was hard to believe. I had friends- no, a  _ family _ . It was hard for me to understand, so I came across as standoffish and uncaring about you guys. That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Keith had so many good memories of Voltron. When he thought about it, the only good memories he had other than the ones with his mother were of Voltron. That said a lot about what kind of people they were and what impact they had had on his life. It really did, especially since at least a few years had passed without contact and Keith was still talking to them.

“The time that we hosted a party for the local Arusians in the castle, I was a mess. I was on edge from having so many strangers around, but I appreciate what you guys did to try and relax me. I will never forget that stupid cheer- ‘I say Vol, you say Tron? I still don’t get why you wouldn’t just say Voltron and be done with it.”

This time, Keith let himself smile, and it was  _ real. _ A real, fond, happy smile that he wouldn’t let himself deny. Because… why not? He was  _ happy, _ damn it, and if Keith could even have a brief moment of happiness after everything then it was a miracle.

“Yeah, there was the stupid cheer and the nunville- bad decision. Then the night when downhill when Pidge told us she wanted to leave.” Keith internally winced at his reaction to that. “‘You’re putting the lives of two people over the universe’ or something.”

_ Everyone in the universe has families. _

Keith’s stomach dropped as he remembered that. Everyone. Everyone but Keith. Why had he refused to count himself? Had he really thought that little of himself, even back then?

“I… still don’t know why I blew up like that. Later on, I would have said that my reason was practical, or some shit like that, but now? Maybe… it was because I didn’t want to be abandoned again. I didn’t want to lose a person I had started to befriend, someone that I fought with and trusted my life with.”

Someone that Keith could relate to.

“After that, my night just got worse and worse. First, we find Lance and Coran unconscious, then we split up, then I get locked out of the castle, helpless. One of the worst feelings in the world is to hear your friends in pain and being just the right distance to not be able to do anything, but feel like you can if you try.

“I listened to all of you fighting and being hurt, while I was stuck outside the castle with Allura. Yeah, in the end, we won and beat Sendak, but I never shook off the feeling that there was nothing I could do to help any of you. I was just limited to… fighting only when I was close enough to do  _ anything _ , if that makes any sense. Nothing else. Worthless.”

Keith’s words sped up as he remembered it all, as he lost himself slightly to the memory. It had been terrible. Terrible. He was worthless. And Keith had done nothing. Pidge would have had every right to surrender and save herself, Shiro, and Lance. Keith had done nothing that day except hurt her, and Keith remembered that Pidge and Allura had gotten into a fight, too.

But Pidge hadn’t done that. She’d saved them.

The memory of running into the castle, defeating Sendak and helping Shiro and Lance burst into his mind.  _ We are a good team. _ Keith was tempted to snort, but he didn’t laugh. Who knew how Lance felt about the “bonding moment”, even now?

“Also, Lance… I know you didn’t forget, but that’s okay. I would have felt better if you told me you did remember back then, but… I got over it, I guess. You’re just bad at lying. Better you than me- I’m the one that needed to keep secrets.”

Was that too much? Probably. But Keith didn’t have a reason to care anymore.

“Then… I guess there wasn’t much on the Balmera. It felt good to liberate people that had been enslaved for centuries, if not thousands of years. They even helped us, so… it wasn’t like most other planets. But… freedom. I could only imagine it back then.”

Keith’s voice turned cold and quiet as he continued speaking. “Now I know what it finally feels like to be free from someone.”

How would the team respond to that? It was doubtful that they would know anything, given that line without any other knowledge of Keith’s situation. Would they jump to conclusions? Would they guess what happened to him? Or would they think he was exaggerating or referring to something else entirely?

He let out a breath and continued. “Overall, freeing the Balmera was a good experience. That also had a sign in it- I closed the hangar doors using my handprint, but that wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t Galra.”

How had Keith missed all of those signs? Like, seriously. And everyone else, too. How had no one figured it out?

“Anyway… everything was okay for a little bit, but then we went to that outpost.” Keith scowled as he remembered the event. They could have prevented that if they would have just talked to each other. “That was even more of a disaster than Sendak. We let Allura and Shiro sneak onto the ship by themselves, then I ran off to follow the druid. I never told you guys this, but a vial of quintessence splashed onto my skin and wherever it touched, I turned Galra-purple. It faded when I got back to you, but that was when it occurred to me that I might be Galra. After the whole mess… but, I’m focusing on this. I’ll talk about that later, I guess. Yeah.

“So when I got back and found Allura gone, I… I’m not sorry for what I said, It  _ was _ dangerous and stupid for us to just attack Zarkon’s home base without any idea of what would meet us and without a significant member of our team. We only escaped because of the Blade of Marmora. Since we did escape, I don’t know what we would have done if we failed, but it was a risky idea anyway. Obviously, we needed Allura, but we should have prepared more than charging into Central Command. On the inside, it’s even more fortified.”

The words had sort of just slipped from his mouth. Keith still had no idea how he felt about the first battle with Zarkon and Central Command. The words had just… felt natural. That wasn’t a good thing. Keith knew that. He knew that, back on Earth, people needed therapy for any one of the single events he had been through- losing his family, living in solitude for nearly a year, fighting a war, getting captured- so that was a major sign Keith needed help. But he didn’t have that opportunity. He barely had enough time to do this, if he was even able to finish recording messages.

But Keith made a resolution that, if he ever got away, he’d at least  _ try _ to make himself feel whole again.

His only concern for that plan was that it was likely that he wouldn’t have the will to live after going through that again.

People had killed themselves over less.

But- Keith needed to focus on what he was saying. Right. The plan was ridiculous. They shouldn’t have gone back. There was no reason for them to assume that was a fight they could win. But… at least they had made it out alive, and with little-to-no damage to themselves.

“Anyway… fighting the emperor. Zarkon. He could breathe in space- he didn’t need a spacesuit, and he could just speak to me.” Keith furrowed his brows as memories rushed towards him. “He told me I fought like a Galra soldier and it… it was unnatural. I found out he’s… immortal… to all… except his own blood…” 

Images flashed in Keith’s mind. The camera in front of him, the dark room, it all vanished. There was nothing but the dark colors of the Galra, the feeling of being trapped in that cell, the memories of being  _ nothing. _

_ good little slut… _

_ halfbreeds are pleasant, aren’t they? _

_ disgusting that a creature like that could ever dream of taking down our empire… _

_ blood, blood, blood… _

_ your impudence will cause your rebellion to fall… _

_ i am the emperor, and that won’t change in another ten thousand decaphoebs… _

_ you will never save the universe. _

Keith’s eyes were wide and he felt like he was falling down… down… down to where no one could ever help him. It was like he was outside of his body watching himself lose to his own history. It felt like  _ pain. _

He tried to speak again. “And… and… nevermind. Later, I promise.” Keith took a shaky breath and tried to reorient himself. He wasn’t still in the cell. He was free. He was talking to Voltron- right? Or was that an illusion? Who was he talking to?

The answer was no one, of course, and Keith  _ knew that, _ but he refused to think it. He refused to think of a future where no one ever heard his screams.

“No, no, no, I…” Keith went silent, then took a deep breath. “Okay. The wormhole incident. That… was a mess.”

Right. Focus on something else. Try to ignore the memories looming above him. Focus, on… on… what was he doing? Telling his story? Yes, that was right, he was okay. He inhaled and exhaled in an attempt to focus on his breathing rather than the darkness. Keith slowly brought himself back to his right mind and attempted to continue telling his story.

“When Shiro and I crashed onto that barren planet, I was worried. He was too far away, or something, at first. I don’t get why- we could communicate from our flying robots in space, and not from a few miles away on some planet? But… that whole experience was really… scary, I guess? That sounds stupid, but hearing him almost die? The only reason Shiro’s still alive is that Black let me in. Later on, Shiro told me, just before we were found, that if he ever died, he wanted me to lead Voltron. I didn’t want him to die, and I couldn’t even imagine leading without him. I was a terrible leader. Now I can’t even lead at all.”

Old Keith would have scowled at that, but New Keith didn’t care. It was simply… reality. And there was nothing he could do to change that. So he continued on like he didn’t really care- even if he really, really did care.

“When we got back, I thought a lot about it. I knew I didn’t want to do that. I’m- I  _ was _ \- the Red Paladin. I’m not meant to lead. I can’t be… without Shiro. So when he got out of the healing pod, I was… really, really happy. Before he had told me I was supposed to follow in his footsteps, I would have just been happy. But then, I was so glad that I wouldn’t have to lead Voltron. It’s stupid and selfish, but… I didn’t want to have those responsibilities.”

And he had  _ known _ how stupid it was. It seemed even more ridiculous four and a half- was that right? Time was hard in space- years later, with a whole lot more experience and a recent trip through hell. Old Keith was an idiot. An idiot who had no idea what he was doing.

He tried to turn his thoughts away from all of that. Better to avoid his problems than obsess over them, right?

No, but what else could he do?

“But… Shiro told us about this Galra who had helped him. I got sort of excited, because… well, yeah, new allies. But also… if I was Galra, it wouldn’t be so bad if the rest of the species wasn’t all bad, right?”

Being Galra was… something Keith didn’t like to think about. He didn’t like to think of the term “halfbreed” being used in situations he hated remembering, used to make him feel as though he was less than the rest of them. Keith wished he  _ wasn’t _ Galra sometimes. But if he wasn’t Galra… would he even exist? There  _ wouldn’t _ be a Keith Kogane, would there? Being Galra was something… that made him stand out. Sometimes, the little ridiculous parts of Keith liked the attention he got for being different.

Most of that part of Keith had died when he had found out what a halfbreed’s place in society was.

“Then Allura argued how it was  _ impossible _ that any Galra were good. Her words reminded me not to get my hopes up. I still held onto the idea that I was just a normal human, or half anything but Galra. When we went to those explosive crystal clusters, and Ulaz boarded our ship, I was doing fine until I saw his knife. The symbol on his weapon- it was so similar to the one on  _ my _ knife. That was when I was sure I was half-Galra. At that point, the evidence was just stacking up around me and it was so obvious… 

One thing Keith had known for certain at the time was that he  _ wasn’t human. _ Even if he had somehow mistaken his knife for something found on Earth, there were too many coincidences that, when put together, made nearly irrefutable evidence. Should Keith have told them? Probably, but he had clung onto that ridiculous hope.

Perhaps rightfully so? His heritage had done nothing but ruin him.

“...but I didn’t get the chance to find out more, because Ulaz _ died _ , right in front of us. He sacrificed himself so we could live to fight another day. That was when I realized the Blade of Marmora was serious. It wasn’t something that Zarkon faked. These guys were willing to kill themselves for the greater good.”

The Blade of Marmora wasn’t a  _ joke. _ Keith knew firsthand how serious they were about winning the war. Their secrecy had kept him from hearing anything about them while walking through the streets, but he hoped they were still around. Keith doubted they would let themselves be destroyed since he had left. They had survived ten thousand decaphoebs before him, Voltron, or any allies at all. They would survive, and Voltron was still alive, so… hopefully. Hopefully.

He hoped Allura had learned, by now. She accepted him, but… how far did that reach? If she ever watched these recordings, would she stop believing in her positive idea of Galra? Of half-Galra? Once she learned what their only purpose was?

Keith was okay with not ever seeing that.

“All of our missions afterward, I was more fixated on the Galra and the Blade than the missions themselves. Olkarion. The small raids on random fleets. Then there was trying to escape Zarkon and his fleet. I just wanted to sleep. I was tired, overwhelmed, and sick of being unsure of who I was.” Keith felt the same way, still. Had felt that way. He couldn’t remember being… happy. When had he ever been happy?

It clicked when he remembered a good memory, and he almost lit up, but kept himself together.

_ youdon’tdeservehappinessyou- _

“Then the fleet kept chasing us, no matter where we went… so I ran away. I don’t know why Allura thought they were tracking her- if she was being tracked, she would have known ten thousand years ago, or she would have known if the Galra found her before we did.”

Keith had had a lot of time in the past few years, alright? He had thought over all of his memories, tried to piece them together, and that had been what kept him sane. That had been what brought him there, in front of that camera. His team’s questioning looks, wondering why he thought that, always came back to haunt him. He wondered what they thought of that, later. Or did they not fixate on the past, the way Keith had? They were probably living in blissful ignorance, without a clue the suffering he had been through.

_ Don’t feel sorry for yourself, Keith,  _ do something _ about it. _

“You guys know that Allura came with me when I left. I was sick of fighting and I was worried that the Galra were either tracking me through the knife or my blood- I wasn’t completely sure, yet, but it was practically confirmed that I was Galra. It had been so obvious the entire time. I felt  _ bad _ , though, to hear you guys through the helmets- you were under stress and couldn’t fix it, but I was lightyears away, drifting aimlessly through space.”

The feeling of helplessness never left him.

“When we knew for sure that it wasn’t either of us that the Galra were tracking us through, I panicked and didn’t think before using those turbo-boosters Pidge installed. They were just as dangerous as always, but… in those minutes spent waiting uselessly, I connected with Red. It was… like I had ascended into another understanding of the universe. It was crazy, and she came and saved me… it was insane. But amazing.”

Something like serenity, something he hadn’t felt in a long time, flooded through Keith at the memory. Red. He missed her, he really did. Keith missed having that connection, that  _ understanding, _ with another being. Even if Red wasn’t necessarily alive, she was a powerful force in his life, almost motherly, and in moments like the one he spoke of, how  _ loved _ and  _ together  _ he felt how much Red cared for him, how much she loved him. Keith had never known how much he desired that bond.

“That connection with Red and finding out they were tracking us through Black were the best things that could have possibly come out of that. If we hadn’t done that, we would have taken much longer to find out how the Galra were tracking us. I get that we weren’t easily replacable back then- not like later, when we had two possible Paladins for Black, Red, and Blue. Especially after getting locked out of the castle, I couldn’t take sitting by and doing nothing  _ again _ .”

Keith felt more centered now. Those memories were stressful, yes, but he had been more… normal back then. He had been really  _ living. _ Talking about good parts of his life reminded him that he was  _ capable _ of feeling that way. Surely Keith could do it again?

“We didn’t do much between finding out they were tracking us through the Black Lion and finding the Blade of Marmora. When Shiro bonded with Black and broke off from Zarkon, we were at the swap moon- er, space mall? That was… fun. Like the calm before the storm. It was exciting in a way that wasn’t fighting, with Lance and Pidge buying Earth stuff and Hunk becoming space Gordon Ramsay.”

Keith’s face  _ f _ _ elt brighter. _ It was nice to remember those things. Those memories… were probably some of the best memories he had ever had. He had his friends, he was smiling, crazy things that weren’t life-threatening were going on…  


It was great. He wished things could have stayed that way.

“But… we got what we came for and had fun doing it. Yeah, I was tricked by a four-armed knife enthusiast, Coran was tricking a guy into giving him ‘ugly blue bowls’, and we were chased on a cow by a Zarkon fanboy, but it was nice. We got a cow out of it.” Keith paused, then added thoughtfully, “Cow. That’s so weird to say. Earth things are so far away…”

When was the last time he had thought of those simple things on Earth? Keith knew he wasn’t exactly a perfect model of what life on Earth usually was, but shouldn’t it have bothered him a little more, not having seen the only place he had known for the majority of his life in  _ years? _ Keith was more messed up than he thought, wasn’t he?

With that thought, his mood darkened. The nice memories were over.

“But everything went away. That sense of… of being  _ normal _ went away every time I went back to my room and just stared at that knife. The biggest sign of not being human. I hated it. One of our species’ greatest flaws is its tendency to view what is not like them as “other” or “different”. Not like them. I knew that I could never get back that life I used to hate. Knowing that I was even more  _ different _ than I had been before- short, Asian, orphan, “problem child”, then one of the five- six- people in the entire universe to be able to pilot Voltron, and half-alien, half- _ Galra _ , the species we were fighting. It’s… crazy.”

But… did Keith care anymore, about those simple little things? Who cared if he was shorter than most people, and against everything biology told him? Who cared if he was Asian, or without a family, or aggressive and distant? Those things didn’t matter. They were useless in the grand scheme of things. And Keith… wasn’t  _ ashamed _ of being half-Galra. He had never felt that way. If he was ashamed of anything, it would be of being human. And… he wasn’t. He was just as much of a human when he realized he was an alien as he was before then. Keith didn’t  _ care. _

He sometimes wished he was full Galra, or not Galra at all, to avoid his fate, but… that didn’t happen.

“It didn’t come as a surprise to have Kolivan tell me I was part Galra. By the time the knife activated, I was already sure that I was half-Galra. I’m glad I got final proof- I’m still me, it doesn’t matter what I am. It’s  _ who _ I am- was- that counted. Just because Allura and Coran are aliens doesn’t mean we should treat them badly. And it’s not like I turned Galra or anything.” Keith briefly paused to try and find a good way to explain it.

It’s… like- Allura and Coran look a lot like humans, right? But even though they  _ look _ like humans, they’re  _ not _ human. But do we judge them for being aliens? No, because we believe in who they are, not the fact that they’re Altean. Maybe we met them because they’re Altean, but their species doesn’t determine their worth. It’s the same for me- I look human, but I’m only partially human. We might have met because of my human side, but we became friends and teammates because of who all of us are. That’s why it’s okay that Allura and Coran are aliens, that Pidge is a girl, and that I’m half-Galra. Yeah?”

Yeah. That… made sense, right? He liked thinking of it that way. It made the most sense. It reminded him of something the Olkari had said once. What was it?

_ We’re all made of the same cosmic dust. _

_ He _ had said that, but it summed everything up fairly well.

Keith sighed as he remembered how history had actually taken place. It  _ definitely _ hadn’t gone about in the way he wished it had.

“Then… there was that whole time where Allura  _ hated _ me. I know why- even though I had accepted being part Galra, it probably seemed like something almost… impossible. Like something that couldn’t be real. Someone being an alien that you had thought was human the entire time? That had to be fake, right? But it  _ wasn’t _ . All of the evidence was there.”

Keith  _ understood, _ he really did. He wasn’t that clueless. The Galra had destroyed everything Allura had ever known and left her with only six people she could rely on. And finding out one of them was descended from the people that had taken her world away from her? What Allura had done wasn’t right, but… Keith got it.

“It was hard to focus on defeating the Galra Empire when Allura hated me so much, but we got through it. Getting scaultrite from a Weblum with Hunk? That worked, except I found one of Lotor’s generals, Narti or Acxa or something. Also- the Galra Keith jokes weren’t very funny, but… I guess it could’ve been worse. At least you guys were trying.”

Keith frowned as he remembered the Galra Keith jokes. He didn’t like to remember how his teammates had acted like he was a different person when they discovered his heritage. They had acted like he was… dangerous. Being alienated- ha, alien, and that thought confirmed how insane Keith was- by the only people who had cared for him most of his life was… hurtful. But… at least they made an effort to try and not be blatantly rude to him. But racism hidden behind awkward laughter and cluelessness was still racism.

He quietly cleared his throat and moved on.

“Yeah. Well, anyway… moving on. Seeing Thace die in front of me- seeing a Blade die in front of me again- that wasn’t great, but I couldn’t let that distract me from what we thought was the final battle. I can barely  _ remember _ that battle. I just remember…” Keith’s breathing quickened as blurry memories flooded his mind.

“Zarkon… the robot… and… Shiro gone. Running to the Black Lion and just… he was gone. He was  _ gone _ .”

_ A dark room, chains, someone hovering in front of him- no, over him- no- _

_ “No Shiro, all alone, no one can save you, give in…” _

_ painpainpainpain- _

_ pleasedon’thurtmeanymorei’lldowhatyouwantmeto- _

_ isweari’myoursi’mnothingbuta- _

_ a- _

_ a Galra- _

Keith closed his eyes tightly with a whimper and tried to center himself, but he had nothing. Where was he? Some- some dark room- was it the room? Was he back in the- did he never really-?

He mumbled something to himself that someone had told him once. A female voice. His mother? A fellow prisoner? He only knew what it meant to himself. He had told himself that was what it meant, even if that wasn’t it. He didn’t know the language. He knew nothing. He only had what the words meant to him.

_ No one can hurt you if you’re already broken beyond repair. _

His tense muscles relaxed. That was… comforting, right? The Galra couldn’t hurt him any more than they already had. That was all over. It was all over. He was safe.

“I’m okay,” Keith mumbled. He looked up at the camera, wondering what his teammates would think of that. “I… yeah. Soon.”

He took a deep breath and slowed his breathing. They couldn’t hurt him anymore. He was- not okay, not really, but… unable to be hurt anymore. Keith had already faced enough pain for any more inflicted upon him to hurt. He let out a long breath and continued.

“Being…  _ Voltron _ without Shiro was… really hard. I hadn’t had to face anything like that in a long time. Not since Shiro vanished the first time. Everyone acted like he was replaceable, like we could just find another pilot for the Black Lion, and it would be like Shiro never existed. I searched through planets and crashes and the wreckage of the battle every single day, looking for Shiro. We couldn’t form Voltron without him, but everyone expected our team to be the same saviors that we were before then.”

Bitter anger flooded Keith’s veins as he continued, a sharp contrast to how he had felt only moments before. How… how could he even put it into words? Why didn’t those  _ idiots _ they saved understand that it wasn’t easy to leave everything you’d ever known to fight for people you hadn’t even been certain existed? Why didn’t they understand how lucky they were, to stay away from the fight, the battles, the blood, the pain, the scars…?

Why weren’t they more conscious of how… pampered they were, under Galra rule? Keith  _ knew _ how cruel the Galra were, and he would never say otherwise, but… they had grown used to being nothing. They were used to having Galra overlords that didn’t give a shit about them.

The worst part was that Keith  _ understood _ that feeling. He understood how easy it was to give up on fighting and just… let himself be used. Let himself become numb to everything they did to him. Let it become his  _ normal. _

Those people had been given the chance to become normal, to finally fight back, and they hadn’t even thought of how important that was. Of how much that might have meant to someone else. Were they even aware of how many people were enslaved? Weren’t they grateful that they could have any sort of freedom at all? Wouldn’t they want others to feel that same way?

Some people  _ couldn’t _ fight back. Some people  _ could. _ But out of the people that could, so few brought themselves to do so. Why? They knew how it hurt, so why couldn’t they bring themselves to stop others from feeling that same pain?

If Keith could fight back, he would.

“They should fight, if not for themselves, then for all of the people that  _ can’t _ ,” he added softly, casting his eyes downward. If those planets who had refused to raise even a finger to help Voltron’s cause after they were freed had joined the Coalition and gone into battle with the others, would Keith had ever been captured? Would he have been freed? There was no way to predict what kind of impact it could have had on the universe, had those people bothered to  _ fight. _

Keith let out a soft breath and continued. “I never wanted to be the Black Paladin. It wasn’t… it wasn’t my  _ role _ . I was… Shiro’s right hand, I guess. It felt wrong, like I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I  _ wish _ it had been Lance or Allura. Not me. It had been forced on me, like Shiro and everyone else were telling me that I should be a leader, that _ obviously _ I’d make a great Black Paladin. But I wasn’t. I was too impulsive, and rash, and didn’t listen to any of you, and… wrong. I didn’t belong there. I was terrible and I failed you over and over again… all the times we faced Lotor, and when we met the Alteans…”

He paused, the memory of the event rushing back to him. “That was bad. Really bad.”

Keith remembered showing minimal emotion during the encounter itself, but that never meant he wasn’t affected by it. He had gotten so good at masking his emotions over the years, half the time he couldn’t even tell if it was real or not. Watching that, and wondering if his teammates would speak up, or if he should say something, he had felt as if his fate rested in their hands. Since they had never really… addressed the fact that Keith was Galra, he had wondered if they felt the same way as the Alteans did about the Galra. He  _ knew _ that his teammates trusted him enough to lead them into battle, but was that loyalty out of convenience?

Experiencing that had shaken his confidence, even if Keith had hidden it from his fellow team members. His  _ friends. _

“When we went through the rift and met the evil Alteans, I was just… I wanted to kill them. Because in that universe, I either didn’t exist, or I was a slave. Just because I was Galra. It was stupid, that wasn’t even our reality, but… being human doesn’t make you stupid, being Altean doesn’t make you stuck-up, and being Galra doesn’t make you evil. I’m glad we got out, and I’m glad we didn’t stay longer, or… I’d end up even worse off than I am now. Because having some semblance of free will is better than none.”

At least Keith could pretend he still resembled a normal human. He could pretend that he wasn’t half-alien, he could pretend he wasn’t scarred, he could pretend that he wasn’t messed up in a thousand different ways. In that universe… he wouldn’t have ever known what that was like.

But sometimes Keith wondered if that would have been better.

“I was just… so messed up by that point. Exhausted, so when I found Shiro, I was so, so happy.”

Finding Shiro in that Galra fighter was… insane. Black had suddenly frozen up, and she drifted in space for a while before Keith finally figured out how to use the backup comm system and call the Castle. But then her power had turned back on and she guided them to that one tiny ship. And… Shiro.

If Keith had to pick one person in the entire universe to save, he would choose Shiro. Shiro had been with him for so long, and they had helped each other through so much. If Keith died before any sort of rescue, he hoped he got to see Shiro again. Just once. No matter what Shiro thought of him.

“But… he didn’t free me. He didn’t let things go back to how they were. I would stay in the Black Lion, Lance in Red, Allura in Blue. I didn’t want that. I didn’t know how to force Shiro back into Black.”

Everything would have been so much easier if Shiro had just become a Paladin once more. Everything would have been avoided. Keith wouldn’t be sitting here, in front of a camera, desperately spilling out his life story to what he hoped would someday be his friends.

If Keith ever got free again, he would at least try to get help. This was… not as healthy as he thought it would be.

He let out a breath as his story came to an end. “Then Lance showed up one night. He told me about his insecurity and the fact that we have more Paladins than Lions, but… it clicked. I was the replaceable one. Allura deserved it, Lance was better, and…  _ Shiro _ was the one everyone wanted.  _ Shiro _ was the one with good decisions and was always meant to be the Black Paladin. So… I distanced myself. I hoped that with me gone, Shiro could reclaim Black. I officially joined the Blade of Marmora and… that was it. The more time I spent with the Blade, I was sure that I belonged with them. Not Voltron. I’m not good enough for Voltron. Never was. It was only a matter of time.”

Because why would a worthless halfbreed ever be good enough to pilot the universe’s greatest weapon? Just… just a pawn, an insignificant footnote in someone else’s story. He wasn’t important. All Keith was good for was-

Was-

He choked down a sob and bit his tongue hard enough to bleed before finishing. “So… I left. And you guys were better without me. I wasn’t important. Worthless. I joined the Blade full-time, and… that was it. My time with you was over.”

Keith quickly pressed the stop button and curled in on himself, tears streaming down his cheeks. Worthless. Nothing. Inferior. Useless. Pointless.

Not good enough.

_ Voltron, _ he wondered as he quietly sobbed.  _ Did they think I was worthless, too? _ Were they even really friends? Or did he just desperately cling to the idea that someone cared about him? Did they hate him? Was he nothing more than a weapon? Did they ever really think he was important?

Memories flashed through his head.

_ -but there are only five lions, and if i’m right, that’s one paladin too many- _

_ -patience yields focus- _

_ -i’ve waited ten thousand years for this- _

_ -i can’t ‘man up’, i’m a girl- _

_ -you know, keith was there too- _

_ -it’s not what’s in your blood, it’s who you are that counts- _

_ -victory or death- _

Keith blinked rapidly to try and clear the tears. Victory or death. Even if it was Galra, it meant he didn’t have a chance to simply  _ give up. _ He wouldn’t let himself fall to the ground and accept defeat because he was Keith Kogane, and he was… not okay. Never okay. But that didn’t mean everything that had come before was without purpose. Keith would never forget.

One last, quiet phrase echoed in his mind, and he shivered.

_ Let’s form Voltron! _

Keith wiped at his face with his hands and pushed himself back up to face the camera. He pressed that same symbol he had decided was “name” and thought about a code name for a second before saying, “Three- Daggers.” That was good enough, right? They had probably figured out already that he was going in the order of events of his life.

Keith didn’t want to think about what would come after this next recording.

He pressed the start button and kept his strange silence- maybe it symbolized something? Subconsciously?- before speaking.

“Hey. Again. Well, this is about my time with the Blades, and how I ended up with the Galra.” Ke ith let out a long breath. “This… it’s kinda fuzzy. I mean, I wasn’t there for long. Only a few phoebes. Er- months. Yeah. They use the same time as Alteans. It wasn’t long, anyway, and afterward… well, you could probably guess. So this is sort of hard to tell.”

Keith didn’t want to think about what the part of his life after the Blades was like. But there he was. Too late to back out now. So he took a shuddering breath and continued.

“So… I traveled to the closest planet right after leaving. Its name was Erion, and it was fairly normal. A city planet, like Earth. My mind was all over the place, and I had to take a break while contacting the Blade of Marmora.” Keith remembered Erion. It… reminded him of Earth, if nothing else. There wasn’t much personality to it. It was a bit similar to his current living space, now that he thought about it. Tiny, dark room. Anxiety. Fear. Confusion. Desperate memories of his family… “It was just… kind of crazy that, after a whole year, I just left. I left the only people in the entire universe that I cared about, my first  _ real family _ . I just… abandoned them. Abandoned you guys. After all that we’d been through… now, I wish that I’d never done that. Like I said before, I had a lot of mistakes and regrets, but leaving is, by far, my greatest. All of what happened later was my fault, because I thought the easiest way to solve our problems was just leaving. It would have been so much easier to step down, save all of us this heartbreak. Everything would be so much better if I had done that.”

Keith thought of Shiro, and wondered how he would take that. Who knew what state the man was in by now? “Just to be clear, I don’t regret Shiro returning to the Black Lion. The team wanted Shiro, and so did I. I didn’t contribute anything nearly as important as any of the rest of you, and I really helped people in the Blade. Plus…”

He paused as he thought of his time with the Blade of Marmora. Missions aside, he was… good for them. Maybe. But the cold, suspicious glares of people they freed directed at the Blades, went away slightly at the sight of someone the same species as the  _ Paladins of Voltron. _ It seemed impossible to slip away from the label when he had his mask off. But when it was on? He was a Galra to all of those people he’d risked his life for- he was less than nothing to them. They  _ hated _ him with a passion.

Keith had never been quite sure if he hated that position he held in the Blade or not. What he  _ had _ hated was the disgusted expression they gave him when they found out he was a halfbreed.

His teammates didn’t need to know that.

Not yet.

He would hold out on breaking for as long as he could.

“It was easy to talk to the people we freed when one of us didn’t look… Galra. With me and the rest of the Blade, people slowly started to understand that there’s always good out in the universe. Always hope somewhere.” Keith would have smiled had he not felt bitter about it- and had his next thought not been so dark.

“When I first joined the Blade of Marmora, the first thing they did was drill one phrase into my mind.  _ The mission before the individual. The mission before the individual. The mission before the- _ ” Keith’s voice cracked, and he stopped and took a deep breath. “They reinforced what I had thought my entire life. As long as the job is done, it doesn’t matter if I’m dead or alive at the end.”

_ themissionbeforetheindividualthemissionbeforetheindividualthemissionbeforetheindividual _

Because who cared about Keith in the world, anyway? Who would mourn his death? Who would even notice his absence? He doubted the Paladins changed much after he left them. Same for the Blade of Marmora. He didn’t matter to  _ anyone. _

And that was the bitter truth of this all, wasn’t it?

“The other Blades hated me at first. I had been their enemy, for a bit. Wrecked their base. Destroyed their trials. I was the first halfbreed to be part of the Blade of Marmora. At first, it was shameful to have a mutt doing the same thing as them, being  _ better _ , Kolivan’s first apprentice since Antok.”

The Galra weren’t an incredibly expressive species, but Keith was aware of how bothered his fellow Blades had been at his presence. Kolivan practically adopting him wasn’t helpful either- it would have been better had Kolivan acted like an actual parent instead of throwing whatever he could at him. It had just increased the dissent inside the organization.

“But as we worked together more, it was less toxic. The first time I ate a meal with the rest of the Blades, I got into a fight.” Keith remembered that fight.

_ Sneaking quietly into the cafeteria-like area of the base… _

_ Quietly getting his food and hoping no one noticed him… _

_ Sitting in the corner of a table, desperate for someone to at least talk to him, but wanting to shrink away every time someone came within a few paces… _

_ “The mutt’s eating?” _

_ “...do you really think you’re better than me?” _

_ “Halfbreeds aren’t good for anything but-” _

_ He never finished that sentence. _

Keith continued on. “But eventually… it wasn’t friendship, what I had with any of them. It was kind of hard to build a friendship knowing that you might sacrifice the other person some day. More of a sense of mutual trust.”

Like Regris. Like Kolivan. Like all of those other Galra who wanted the same thing he did- freedom.

Keith hunched his shoulders slightly as he spoke. “I guess being with the Blade of Marmora wasn’t necessarily toxic, but… there are scars. Failure to follow orders meant a scar to remind you of that failure and learn from it. Remember to never value any individual or prioritize any individual over the mission. If it comes down to it, choose to do your duty over saving your teammates. Lose yourself. You  _ don’t matter. Nobody _ matters, unless they’re vital to completing the mission.”

He quietly reached behind him, making it subtle so that hopefully it wasn’t obvious on camera, and slipped under his own shirt, fingers brushing over scarred skin. It was hard to tell which ones were from where. The Galra on Central Command had laughed when they saw how broken he already was.

“Right? Forget about what you’re worth, because that ‘worth’ isn’t really real.”

He let out a soft sigh and added on a last bitter note.

“When we went on missions, the enemy either called me a halfbreed mutt or a child. One of those statements is true.”

Halfbreed mutt.

Keith looked away as he continued talking, a feeling like he was about to vomit starting to overwhelm him. “Eventually, I did my own research on the Galra. As it turns out, halfbreeds are in high demand, but… not in the military. I’ll explain that next. Right after this. All of the stuff that I promised I would explain later. It’ll be… a lot. That’s the climax. Where all of it will come together.”

He didn’t want them to know what a useless, terrible waste of a life he was, he didn’t want them to know how easy it was to spread his legs and pretend like everything was alright, he didn’t want them to know that- that his only conscious thoughts were of them- that he was so pathetic that barely a year’s worth of memories consumed his existence- that Keith Kogane was a bastard, a bitch, a halfbreed, that deserved to die.

“All of the things that I… can barely talk about. What’s too recent, too new to really be talking about… but here I am. I don’t have that luxury. They’ll find me soon. It’ll be any second. I could probably…” He winced at his next words, “...convince whoever shows up to let me finish talking, but nothing is for sure. I probably won’t be able to even send this for a long time. Might end up being sentries, but I think this planet is only living guards.”

If Team Voltron ever watched this, that would surely tell them all they needed to know about Keith.

He didn’t  _ enjoy _ it. He didn’t  _ enjoy _ anything. When he was younger, people that hated themselves to an almost laughable extent had seemed so ridiculous. How could anyone have such pure, unadulterated loathing for  _ themselves? _ How could they possibly have had such a terrible life that they would drive themselves to end it? Keith had gone through more than them, and he was  _ fine. _ Maybe depressed, maybe lonely, but  _ fine. _ Willing to keep living.

But now Keith knew what it was like to find the person you’ve become absolutely revolting. How had he ever become the type of person that was willing to do whatever someone wanted just for a tiny thing that would never matter? How had he ever become willing to give away his  _ everything _ for one small idea of rebellion?

How had he become complacent, soft,  _ useless? _

Keith bit his tongue,  _ hard. _

“But… anyway. I had been a mess when I left you guys, and… it only got worse. Honestly. I didn’t know if I identified as a human or Galra, or if I was a person or a soldier or a machine. I didn’t know if it was even worth living. Blade after blade, scar after scar, mission after mission, a life that barely counted flashing in front of me.”

Keith paused, and he wasn’t sure what that meant to him. There were so many things he didn’t understand about himself, about his past, about why he’d destroyed everything he could ever have brought himself to love. Why he’d forced himself to leave Voltron. Why he’d pretended that nothing ever affected him. Why he had decided that sacrificing himself for all those people out in the universe was a good idea.

_ themissionbeforetheindividual _

“The Blade of Marmora training worked. They broke me.”

Keith took a deep breath and started the beginning of the end. “So… I’m sure you all remember that battle. The one where I  _ ‘died’ _ . To take back a third of the universe. I did my job. I did what they wanted me to. Then I stole a Galra fighter and joined the battle up in space.”

Regrets, regrets,  _ idiot, idiot, idiot- _

“The particle barrier wouldn’t go down…. It just  _ wouldn’t go down. _ The battle would be over if we just  _ destroyed that ship _ . All of those people could be saved… all of you could be saved…”

His mind was whirling as he spoke, dark emotions filling him. The memory of what it had  _ felt like- _ hearing the people he cared about speak over the comms, desperate for an answer, some sort of solution to their problem-

And Keith was right there. Disposable Keith in a disposable ship with a disposable mindset.  _ Voltron _ wasn’t disposable. The  _ Blade _ wasn’t disposable. The  _ rebels _ weren’t disposable. But there was Keith. With the perfect answer to their question.

So he did it. He did what they wanted him to do- right? They wanted to win the battle, they wanted to stop the Galra, they wanted it to all be over, to go home to their happy families on Earth and live out a peaceful existence-

“So I turned around and… crashed into the barrier. I don’t know what… what really happened after that. The world went red with errors and then  _ it went dark. _ I just remember falling… and falling… down, down, down.”

_ Shoving the stick as far forward as he could, closing his eyes tightly and prepared to die. _

_ “Thank you…  _ _ for letting me have this, for letting me pretend to be like you for just a little while, thank you for making me pretend that I matter, thank you… thank you…”  
_

_ Light had exploded and his eyes opened, heat singing his face and surrounding him. A gentle noise in the back of his mind, one he hadn’t heard in months, but it was gone as soon as it came and the world came back into perspective… Keith was there as red covered everything in sight, and then there was nothing… nothing... _

“And… then it was Zarkon.”

_ i’msorryi’msorryi’msorry _

With a sniff of his suddenly-stuffy nose, Keith quickly pressed the stop button. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before grabbing the device and entering another name.

“Four- Empire.”

No stopping this time. He only had one secret left. One thing that destroyed all of what might have been Keith Akira Kogane.

Keith set it down and pressed the start button, half-formed words and thoughts ricocheting in his mind.

“So… this is it. I don’t want to talk about this.” Keith sighed. “This probably… I get it if you don’t want to listen to this. I wish it never happened to me. I’m so… god, I’m stupid. There are so many other things that could have happened if I’d just… whatever. What’s done is done. There’s no point in trying to fix it. The soldiers will find me soon, so I can’t just avoid explaining it forever.”

His eyes darted down in shame as his plan to finish the recordings burst back to life.

“Okay. So… when I was captured. I blacked out, right? And then… then I woke up. It was dark. I was chained to a wall. I heard… voices. They were speaking words that I didn’t understand. The Galra language. I didn’t really know what was going on, but then… I think they brought me out to an arena, and there were speakers? It translated into English, so I knew what Zarkon was saying.”

Keith felt distant, like he wasn’t a part of his own body. Like he was watching himself speak, but he had no control over the words.

“They wanted me to fight, that much I understood. They introduced me as their “captured rebel spy”, so I don’t think they had any idea of what I really was- er, used to be. Not anymore. Not even then, really.”

Had they ever figured out he was part of Voltron? Maybe. Maybe not. It was impossible to tell. Was that why they had put so much effort into breaking him? Or was the Galra Empire so awful that they would destroy anyone who opposed them?

“But… I refused to fight. I will not, and will  _ never _ be  _ entertainment _ for people like that. I hated it back when I fought people from school or on the streets, and I still hate it. When I refused to fight, the guards brought me back into a cell, where… I waited. And waited. It was terrible.”

Keith remembered that cell. It was dark. Small. Shadows had crept up to him and the world had been a whirlwind of nightmares.

“Eventually, though, the Emperor showed up. Zarkon threatened to give me to the guards if I didn’t cooperate and fight the way… the way the last time one of my species did. The Champion. Shiro. My options were obvious- fight, be some Galra whore, or tell them whatever they wanted to hear about the Blade, and hope that it would be enough.”

Was it ridiculous that the Emperor of the Galra had shown up just to threaten a pathetic prisoner? Maybe they  _ did _ know he was part of Voltron, and never taunted him with that as a reminder that he could never be a Paladin again. But… Shiro made the right decision, if he ever faced that situation.  _ Shiro _ had been strong. Keith wasn’t. He wasn’t strong at all.

“I wouldn’t give in. I- I was better than that. Like to lie to myself and say I’m still better than that.” Keith gave a quiet, half-hearted chuckle-was that the first time he laughed? He couldn’t remember- but the words sent a shiver up his spine, and he reflexively glanced behind him at the door, like a soldier would show up and ruin him just for saying anything along the lines of believing he was worth something.

“But ‘doing nothing’ meant Zarkon chained me to the wall and let the guards do whatever they wanted.”

Saying the words made his wrists feel raw once more, though he hadn’t worn shackles in a long while. It made him aware of the pain in his legs, reminding him that he wouldn’t be able to fight the way he used to- not even a short run.

“It was slow. They just… roughed me up a bit, at first. Broke my ribs… it hurt. But they gave me quintessence, so it never stayed. It was like… like it was all fake. Like it could be erased afterward, like it didn’t matter. But as long as I was shiny and ‘fine’, it would keep going.

Injury after injury after injury… the pain never went away in his mind, but he felt nothing. Maybe… maybe Keith’s pain didn’t mean anything, anyway? He should have become desensitized to it at this point. It… didn’t matter that the Galra hurt him since the physical pain was inconsequential, right?

He swallowed hard.

“I couldn’t fight back. I tried. I tried the first few times guards came in to break my bones and make me bleed. Did you know… that the more quintessence there is in your system, the more golden your blood gets?”

Keith paused, then reached down into his boot and pulled out a knife. It was small, smaller than his one from the Blade. He had stolen it off of an officer at some point. Couldn’t remember when. It didn’t really matter if the Galra knew he had it or not- Keith wouldn’t have been able to fight anyway. 

“Look.” He held up his hand and the knife and slowly slid the knife across his skin. There was a small flash of pain, but it was barely anything. Golden liquid dripped out of the wound, and his eyes locked onto the droplets. It…. barely looked like blood. The minimal pain helped in ignoring the fact that it was a real injury.

“I know you guys,” Keith mumbled as he lowered his hand and the knife. At least, he  _ hoped _ he knew them. He wiped the knife clean on the shirt he was wearing and tucked it back into his boot. He left his hand to bleed. He barely felt it anyway. “You’re probably freaking out about this, but this is nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’ve seen so much worse. I’ve  _ been _ so much worse. Just listen, okay? This is… hard enough to say without being able to gauge your reactions. I don’t know how you guys have changed, the only thing for sure is that… you care about each other. Maybe I’m still part of that? If I am, I don’t deserve it.”

Wasn’t that the fucking  _ truth _ ?

“Anyway… I tried fighting back when my blood just turned more and more… golden. I tried fighting back when they humiliated me and treated me like a toy. I tried fighting back for a long, long time. But eventually, I don’t know how long it took, they broke me. Whenever they came into my cell, I just… took it. Didn’t try anymore. The only thing on my mind was that I couldn’t fight for them. I’d gotten myself into that mess, I wouldn’t stop because I’d stopped fighting back.”

Ghost hands slid down his back, his chest, up his thighs… Keith closed his eyes tightly for a second and tried to get rid of them. “Sometimes, Zarkon showed up. He’d ask me to give up information, or fight in the arena for him. I always said no. It always ended up with me not being able to move.”

The pain in his hand reminded him of how that was  _ nothing _ compared to what they’d done to him.

“The Galra liked me, for a reason that I couldn’t figure out. At first, I thought it was because they knew what I was. But no, Zarkon always asked me who I worked for, and I never responded. All they knew was that I was a rebel, if the guards even knew that. My next thought was that I was a halfbreed. Like I said, I did… a lot of research on halfbreeds. They’re rare, and people usually sell them- not even on the black market. The Galra just sell people on the streets. Slavery is… normal. And the guards did call me a filthy halfbreed, among other things… I doubt you want to hear. You can probably imagine.”

At least he wasn’t sold. At least he stayed in one place. Keith could take solace in that, right? At least his suffering wasn’t as terrible as it could’ve been.

“Sometimes, I wonder if it would have been easier if I just fought for them. If I had just gone out into the arena and fought, would I be… better than this? I’m not worth  _ anything _ anymore. You know, I thought I was… getting better. Back with you guys. Team Voltron. I had started to think… it was all okay. Maybe I  _ was _ important. People cared about me. I wasn’t being used or viewed as less. Now I realize that was stupid.” 

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He let out a bitter laugh. It was useless, to be thinking about those things. Yet he  _ still wished they were there. _

He doubted they still wished he was there.

“It was crazy to think that I was anything. I had a purpose everywhere I went, yeah. I tried to solve the mystery about the Blue Lion back on Earth. I fought the Galra to save the universe with Team Voltron. I did the same thing with the Blade of Marmora.”

“You know what I realized, day after day- quintant after quintant? Sitting in that cell? I was doing the exact same thing everywhere I went. Making people happy. Failing at making the government happy. Making the people of the universe happy. Making the Galra happy. It never changed. So I thought… maybe that was all I was meant for. Might as well… stay. I started ignoring Zarkon whenever he showed up. Make him happy, if that was what he wanted. Sit still. Don’t  _ try _ , because where did that get me?”

Soft, compliant, obedient, docile, tame, submissive, controllable, easy Keith Kogane.

Keith had that feeling of being somewhere else as he continued speaking. “Zarkon told me once- it was near the beginning, maybe. When I still tried. When the blood surrounding me was still red. He told me that our rebellion would fail, no matter who I had on my side. He told me that he could only be killed by someone with his blood, and his only remaining family left was too weak to betray him, so we would never ‘save the universe’. We’d always have him as our emperor, and that would never change. It still hasn’t.”

Because Zarkon was still out there. Lotor was still out there. The Galra Empire was far from collapsing. Voltron and the Coalition were helping, but the empire had lasted over ten thousand years. Why had they ever thought they could bring them down?

Voltron was a group of  _ children, _ a princess without a planet, her advisor, a trio of students, a former prisoner of war, and a dropout. Why had any of them ever thought they were strong enough to defeat the Galra? Zarkon had lived ten thousand years without defeat, and Voltron was  _ nothing _ compared to that. Even if they did defeat Zarkon, what then? He had Haggar. He had Lotor. He had all of those Galra soldiers who swore “Vrepit Sa” with all of their heart. So many people who would refuse to lay down and give up the way so many civilizations had done. The way  _ Keith _ had given up.

Maybe they should’ve all given up and gone home while they still could.

“Again, near the beginning, before I stopped caring, I got panic attacks. Shiro was gone again, and this time he took everyone that I knew with him. Nobody would ever come to save me. Do you know how long I was there?” Keith’s voice broke, and tears began to flood his vision.  “You guys abandoned me. I was there for almost  _ four _ years. Do you know how long that is? I went through  _ four years _ of being used by almost every single Galra on Central Command. Just… being their bitch. Because you never saved me.”

They didn’t save him. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault. Keith just- just did what he had to so he could  _ live. _ Right? That was all anyone in the universe had ever done when they accepted defeat and let the Galra take them. They  _ survived. _ It wasn’t his fault.

But it  _ was, _ it fucking  _ was, _ and Keith didn’t know how to say that it wasn’t the fault of the only people he had ever cared about. He didn’t know how to say that they weren’t to blame for everything that had happened. It was all him, didn’t they know that? They should. They should never blame themselves.  _ Never. _

“You know what Zarkon did, eventually? He quit treating me like a prisoner, and made me… I don’t know. Central Command’s whore? It started losing meaning, what I was fighting for. Dressed me up in nice clothes, fed me… still beat me bloody, but… it was like I wasn’t even Keith anymore. Not worthy of being a Blade of Marmora or a Paladin, for sure. Just… nothing.”

Just that halfbreed bitch… just a toy… nothing… it didn’t matter… it  _ didn’t matter… _

“I got out eventually. It was… thanks to Zarkon’s stupidity. He began to let me out of the cell, he obviously thought I wasn’t still imagining killing him every single day. And… you guys attacked one day or something, he told me to stay while he went out to fight you, but I ran. Alarms were flashing, and everything went red…”

He barely remembered. Was he remembering how he arrived, or how he left? Was that the way he got out? Or was that the way he sentenced himself to a life of pain and misery? Keith  _ couldn’t remember. _

“Finding an escape pod was… hard, I guess. I didn’t remember the layout of any Galra ships. Can you believe that I spent four years somewhere without even knowing a way to leave? I didn’t know where a hangar was, or escape pods, or anything. I was just… too tired to care much. I ran, and when I found an escape pod, I threw myself into it. And… I was free. Nobody noticed. I was  _ okay _ . For the first time in four years, I was  _ okay _ .”

okayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokay

A loud crash sounded behind him, and Keith jumped. He twisted around and stifled his gasp, because  _ there was a soldier. _

“Who are you?” the soldier demanded.

Keith looked  _ nothing like _ the people on this planet. He would figure it out, wouldn’t he? “I… uh…” He swallowed nervously.  _ Please don’t take me back, I can’t do it anymore, please… _

“Did I finally strike gold? Are you that whore from Central Command?” The soldier’s face scrunched up as he studied Keith.

“Please don’t take me back!” Keith begged. “At least… not yet! Give me some time, I swear I’ll make it up to you!”

He hated how easy the words fell out of his mouth, but what could he do?  _ Fight? _ He had a tiny knife. He couldn’t fight the way he used to. His hand had stopped bleeding but it was still covered in golden blood. That was a trained Galra soldier, with a gun that could blow Keith’s brain out with the press of a trigger. Keith had to finish this, he  _ had to. _ He was so, so close…

“Make up how?” the soldier asked curiously.

“I’ll do anything you want me to,” Keith promised.

There was a heavy pause, and then the soldier nodded. “Alright, fine. Go on. Do whatever you gotta do.”

He was probably more interested in what he could make Keith do later than letting Keith finish out of the goodness of his heart, but no one did anything because it was the right thing to do in the real world. There was always a reason.

Keith nodded quickly, his eyes wide as he turned back to the still-recording camera. “I… guess I don’t have much time. So… if you need proof or something…” He reached up with his good hand and pulled down the collar of the jacket he had on over the clothes he still wore from Central Command. His friends didn’t need to see that. The collar that rested on his neck would be enough.

“Who knew the Emperor thought you were worth that much?” the soldier jeered from behind him.

Keith scowled but didn’t turn around. “Shut up.” The soldier didn’t seem to hear him.

“So… I only have one more thing to say, but it doesn’t really go with… all this. And I want to get this done, or it’ll just be worse with… him. Yeah. See you… in the next recording. That’ll probably be the last. If I’m lucky, I’ll die when I’m back with Zarkon.”

“Shouldn’t be disrespecting your emperor like that, bitch,” the soldier said from behind him.

Keith bit his lip and didn’t respond. He had fallen into his own fantasy world for a while, but he would have to go back now. Probably forever. He quickly pressed the stop button on the camera. He doubted the soldier would let him take the time to figure out how to send this to the Paladins. He would have to hope that he would be able to get the files back later.

If there ever was a later.

Keith sighed and glanced behind him at the soldier again, who was watching him with a narrowed gaze. Keith frowned and turned back to the camera. He titled the next one “Five- Freedom” despite his current situation and pressed the start button. He took a deep breath and began.

“So… you guys know everything, I guess. And… if I escaped, somehow, there’d be more.” Keith let out a long sigh. “I’d rather be killed, but I doubt that’ll happen. I… I’m sorry. It’s been a long time. A really long time. They broke me, okay? Like… like a dog.”

He cringed at that phrasing. A dog.

“I… I don’t know what to say. I hope you guys rescue me? I hope…” He grabbed the camera and slid down to the floor, holding the camera level to his face.“I wish so, so many things, not that they’ll ever come true. You’ll never see this, probably. It just… makes me feel better that at least I said  _ something _ , and admitted it to myself. If you guys do end up watching this, then… well, if I’m not too late…”

He let out a breath and forced the words out of his mouth. “Well, if you guys haven’t defeated Zarkon yet… I just want you guys to know that you’re doing amazing things for the universe. You’re a beacon of hope for so many people. Okay? So don’t ever stop. You mean a lot to… everyone. To me. Stop the Emperor. Save the universe. If you can…  _ save me _ . Because… you’ve made a huge difference. You’ve done even more since I left. So…”

_ Don’t stop, please, you’re all we have left… _

He looked back at the soldier once more, then pulled the camera even closer to himself. His voice dropped to barely a whisper.  “I believe in Voltron. Each of you does so much for the universe, even those of you who stay behind. You… you just accepted I was gone. I  _ should _ be mad, but I’m not, because I’m not important. I’m just one of the… is there even a number for how many people are in the universe? I don’t know. I’m just one of many, many people that you’d be saving if you brought the Galra Empire down.”

“Are you done over there?’ the soldier interrupted him loudly. “I expect my ‘reward’ for letting you do whatever that was.”

“Yes. Of course,” Keith called, “I’m almost done, don’t worry. You’ll get your reward, I promise it’ll be worthwhile.”

“Better be,” the soldier grunted.

Keith returned his attention to the camera. A small, faint smile graced his lips- a  _ real _ smile. A  _ happy _ smile. Because… because he could still  _ feel that way. _ He wasn’t… completely broken. Shattered glass could still be put back together again.

“I hope you guys see this,” Keith whispered. “And… and  _ form Voltron. _ ”

The lions roared in his head as he pressed the stop button. A familiar connection rekindled in his mind, and that brought him hope. He could be okay. He clung desperately to the remnants of Red and the other lions, and hoped they wouldn’t leave him. Keith  _ needed _ them. Surely… surely Voltron would save him this time?

He stuffed the camera down into the small pocket of his shirt and shoved himself up. He stood and turned to the Galra soldier, who eyed him up and down.

Keith forced a smile and said, “thank you.”

And even when he found himself on his knees between the soldier’s legs later on? Keith  _ didn’t care. _ He vowed to himself that he wouldn’t let himself break. He would be  _ strong. _ He wouldn’t give up, or he’d die trying.

... __  
  



End file.
